McCartney happy to stay patitent

Western Bulldogs coach Brendan McCartney was able to draw on the positives despite watching his side slump to another heavy defeat on Sunday.

The Dogs conceded the first six goals and although they fought back to within a kick during the third quarter, they completely fell away to lose to Richmond by 70 points.

They've now lost their past eight matches by an average margin of 58 points.

But during that time they have thrown several youngsters into the deep end and on Sunday they had another two debutants their fourth in the past fortnight and ninth for the season.

McCartney remains committed and is happy with the direction the club is heading.

"We might have seen a young defender (Fletcher Roberts) come in as a sub and show some good signs," he said.

"They're made of the right stuff. Even the two boys we brought in last week are made the right stuff as well.

"We will keep drafting and developing the right type of player. Get as many people as we can classify as good team-mates and put them together and get a group of people that work for each other and work to help each other and go out of their way to make the game easier for their team-mates.

"We've unearthed some good players and the scoreboard might not show it, but the four young men we've brought in the last two weeks there's a bit to like about that going forward."

The Dogs booted five goals in 10 minutes after half-time to close to within a kick and McCartney hopes to see more of that effort on a consistent basis in the future.

"If there's a contest and intensity and you're prepared to really involve yourself in all areas of the game, the game will reward you," he said.

"As I've said a lot during the year when our contest is right and our method in the contested area is right and we've got people really applying a lot of force around the ball we don't have too many problems scoring, but it has to come on a more consistent basis.

"There were some good signs and a lot of it was on the back of some lesser signs, which is always a positive for us."

The Bulldogs have a tough run home with matches against Sydney and Geelong in the next two weeks followed by a trip to Brisbane in Round 23.

McCartney said the club will continue to put games into the younger generation to give them valuable experience on the big stage.

"What we will do in the next few weeks is find out more about them as people and we'll find out more about them as players and we'll find out just how competitive they are and how quickly they learn from experiences the previous week," he said.

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